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Is it possible to achieve Laserfiche high availability without using shared disk?

Laserfiche How To Ideas Self-Hosted
Updated August 14, 2023
asked on July 31, 2023

Hi,

 

We have a customer asking how to achieve Laserfiche high availability without using shared disk?

 

As we know Laserfiche is supporting failover cluster which requires a disk to be available for all the nodes, so the cluster will switch it along with the services to the passive node in case if current active node failure.

 

In the other hand the SQL server support Always on which not using shared disk.

 

Is there any method or techniques  which Laserfiche support to achieve this scenario? 

 

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replied on July 31, 2023

Hi Abdellah,

Yes, you can use highly available network storage for your data rather than a shared disk. This way the storage holding your Laserfiche data doesn't have to be part of the failover cluster configuration itself.

For example, a highly available Windows File Server cluster, Scale-Out File Server, SMB-compatible storage appliance like NetApp, or file storage service like Azure Files or Amazon FSx for Windows File Server. In this scenario, your repository data (volumes, audit logs, search catalogs, etc.) is pointed at a UNC path (\\fileserver\laserfiche\repository) or mapped network drive for that storage location.

Note that any HA data replication is handled transparently at the storage layer. The Laserfiche application layer does not handle any data replication, unlike SQL Server Always-On Availability Groups.

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View 3 previous replies
replied on August 2, 2023

Hi Samuel,

 

Thank you for quick and valuable reply.

 

So, for confirmation there is no way to achieve this with their vSAN storage? Because they don't have the highly available network storage solutions mentioned  above. 

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replied on August 2, 2023

To be more obvious they are using VMware infrastructure (VMware SDDC), which using vSAN storage. 

 

  1. So, using shared disk on VMware infrastructure causes many limitations such as Snapshots
  2. Live (online) storage vMotion
  3. Hot add memory/vCPU .

 

Therefor they are looking for alternative approaches to achieve the HA for ECM servers without using shared disk.

 

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replied on August 2, 2023 • Show version history

So, for confirmation there is no way to achieve this with their vSAN storage? Because they don't have the highly available network storage solutions mentioned  above. 

I didn't say that - my list above was only some examples.

vSAN File Share with an SMB File Share looks like it could be an option as it's a "SMB-compatible file share/storage appliance". The customer should thoroughly research vSAN File Share to determine if it can meet their needs or not. 

This looks like a good walkthrough: vSAN File Share with vSAN File Service Configuration and Setup

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replied on August 3, 2023 • Show version history

Abdellah, another thought. The customer should consider if they actually need Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) for high availability. It's complicated to configure (as you're finding out) and virtualization-level solutions like VMware vSphere High Availability can often achieve the same practical result in a much easier way.

Only Laserfiche Server and Laserfiche Directory Server support Windows failover clustering; other components like Forms, Workflow, etc. do not.

VMware vSphere High Availability can protect everything.

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replied on August 5, 2023

Great! 

So VMware vSphere HA recommended and easy to configure. I'm wondering how Laserfiche is supporting this solution or how to deploy it, is it just a regular installation of LF modules (like LF Server, LFDS) on virtual machines and then cloning these VMs as a secondary VMS on different hosts and VMware vSphere HA will handle every thing between them?

 

Is there any special configuration or consideration on Laserfiche side or just a normal install/config like on a single machines?

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replied on August 14, 2023

The great thing about the VMware HA approach is that there is nothing different at all on the Laserfiche side. 

is it just a regular installation of LF modules (like LF Server, LFDS) on virtual machines and then cloning these VMs as a secondary VMS on different hosts and VMware vSphere HA will handle every thing between them?

Exactly.

Is there any special configuration or consideration on Laserfiche side or just a normal install/config like on a single machines?

No special configuration. Treat it like a normal install/config.

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